


Letters from Home

by karrenia_rune



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Gen, Prompt Fic, Women of Letters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 18:08:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2516993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hoshi on tea, communications and letters from home and finding a way to make it all make sense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letters from Home

Title: Letters from Home  
Fandom: ST: Enterprise  
Character: Hoshi Sato  
Rating: General Audiences  
Disclaimer: not mine, belongs to Paramount, etc.  
Recipient: for kneazles' previously filled multifandom 'time request'  
Request Details: http://community.livejournal.com/fic_on_demand/211217.html

"Letters from Home" by Karen

The static sound burst routed through the ship's saucer section had had the high-pitched whine registered on a frequency that she was not very familiar with, but practice and familiarity with any number of alien languages, frequencies, and codes filtered through the ship's universal translator did give her any number of advantages.

Despite the initial difficult Hoshi had been determined to decipher its contents. As far out in deep space as the Enterprise's mission had taken it's crew this far out into deep space.

Not that Hoshi minded, not really, untangling the puzzle and then decoding the message was like solving a puzzle and she had always been very good at solving puzzles, riddles, and codes. This was just another one, except a little more high-tech than the ones that she had been accustomed to back home on Earth.

Speaking of Earth, it did not take a rocket scientist or a trained mental health professional to figure out that the crew was tense and on edge, it had been a long time since any of them had had any contact with friends and loved ones back home. 

Solving this particular puzzle had been given a high priority. Hoshi looked up from her station at the communications console at T'Pol and wondered if the only Vulcan crew member realized that to reestablish even a fleeting contact was important.

T'pol apparently sensed her gaze and made eye contact and acknowledge the exchange glances with a brief nod; Hoshi returned the nod and returned her attention back to the task at hand. 

Unexpectedly the narrow cylinder of metal snapped open in her hands and a small slip of vellum paper tied with a crimson ribbon rolled out of it. 

It took Hoshi by surprise for a few brief seconds before she regained the presence of mind to bend down and retrieve it. 

She set aside the cylinder taking care not to jostle it on the mental shelf of her console and gingerly picked it up between the middle fingers of her right hand. 

She untied the ribbon from around the strip of vellum paper Hoshi set aside the ribbon. 

Common sense and logic told her not to get too worked up over what might be nothing or merely a coincidence, or even Commander Tucker's idea of a practical joke; but the other side of her nature, the one that believed in miracles and serendipity, wanted this to be the real thing. 

The knot in the ribbon was one that was very difficult to duplicate, one that she had learned when she had been a very little girl learning to cook at her grandmother's side. 

As she unrolled the paper Hoshi traced the outlines of the curling characters printed onto the surface. 

If Hoshi had been alone in her quarters or elsewhere then she might have allowed her emotions to get the better of her and broken down into tears. As it was, on the bridge she could not allow herself to do that. 

The hand that had painted the Japanese characters had been steady and precise and the  
message/poem made her remember all those she had left behind to accept the mission aboard the Enterprise.

As Hoshi finished reading the poem through several more times she made a promise to herself then and there; no matter how long as it took to reestablish contact, she would write that letter home that she had always intended to do yet somehow never quite got around to doing, and once the communications array was repaired, she would send it. 

It was one thing for the crew to be able to maintain communications with Starfleet Command,it was quite another to have a way to contact their friends and family.


End file.
